


A More Complex Pattern Emerges

by BCRebel



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 07:18:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1336837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BCRebel/pseuds/BCRebel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel discusses the Manning situation with Dr. Leekie, and comes to a new conclusion about the puppet masters that pull her strings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A More Complex Pattern Emerges

**Author's Note:**

> The opening dialogue here follows directly from Rachel and Leekie's exchange in the latest trailer.

“I've only just begun,” she tells him, ice in her voice and stares unseeing out at the lights of Toronto spread beneath her.

“The board is losing faith in your ability to handle the Manning situation, Rachel. We need her alive and as cooperative as possible. So far you've given us no reason to believe you can ensure either,” Aldous tells her calmly, and Rachel is so tired of his patronizing tone she could strangle him with his own tie. He doesn't notice - no one ever does. She turns to fix him with a glare as he continues, “she was in this very office, less than 24 hours ago, with a gun to your head.”

“We're both still alive, aren't we? When I told you I would handle her, Aldous, I meant it. It's taken me longer than I'd anticipated, but it's hardly my fault the board insists on tying my hands at every opportunity. If I had free rein to deal with her as I'd intended she would have been under our control some time ago.”

He's wasting his time here and they both know it. There's nothing more she could be doing to deal with Sarah Manning that she hasn't already done, not if the board continues to place restrictions on her tactics. Aldous turns away with an incredulous laugh and walks to the other end of the room.

“You want to use the other subjects as bait, and you want unrestricted access to the child! You know that isn't possible. They're all far too valuable to be put at risk in whatever game you have planned.”

They've had this argument before. Rachel had thought that Sarah's recent assault on their offices would have changed things but that clearly isn't the case.

“Her daughter and Cosima are the only leverage we have at this point. If you won't allow me to use them, you can't expect quick results. We've gotten under her skin. Her recent attempt at infiltration should be proof enough. It's only a matter of time now,” Rachel's sure of it. Sarah's emotional attachment to her fellow clones and daughter are already a tether binding her to DYAD. If the board would only allow Rachel to tug on the leash Sarah would have come to them willingly without any need for the board to involve themselves further.

With that Rachel steps away from the windows and takes a seat at her desk, wordlessly telling Leekie that he's been dismissed. She is so very tired of dealing with the board and all of their demands and empty threats. She'd almost forgotten what it was like, being accountable to someone beyond the easily manipulated Dr. Leekie. The board usually allows her to run her end of the project as she sees fit, but Helena's recent interference and the appearance of the anomaly that is Sarah Manning has them scared, and fear has driven them to start leaning over her shoulder - asking for progress reports and telling her what she can and can't do.

Leekie isn't taking the hint. He moves to stand in front of Rachel's desk and stares at her until she meets his eyes.

“I need to know that we understand one another, Rachel. The board only has so much patience, and I can only convince them you have the situation in hand for so long before they begin exploring other options,” and there's the condescension in his voice again. They both know he's lying for the sake of theatrics. He hasn't tried to convince the board of anything. He's been looking forward to seeing Rachel fail at something for as long as she can remember.

Something about the way he says 'other options' puts Rachel on edge though.

She let's the silence between them stand as answer enough, picks up a pen and begins signing her name to a stack of papers on her desk. For the next few minutes the only sound in the office is her pen scratching on paper and the click of the keyboard.

When it becomes clear that Aldous isn't leaving without an answer, Rachel grips her pen tightly and gets up slowly from the desk, rounding it to stand a few feet from Leekie and meets his eyes with the same cold glare she uses whenever she's done with a game that's begun to bore her.

“Is the Manning operation mine or not, Aldous?” she asks, and there's steel beneath her words.

He watches her for a moment before giving up and turning away with a sigh, “Don't make us regret the level of autonomy we've allowed you thus far, Rachel. You aren't as important as you think.”

As he turns to leave he stops for a moment to issue one last warning, “Just make sure you have Sarah Manning contained and under control before we need to have this conversation again. She's more important than you are. If the board is forced to seek alternative solutions, you ought to be aware that you aren't irreplaceable.”

His last words strike a chord somewhere inside Rachel, and the moment seems to freeze over. Something clicks and it's like the entire world has shifted into focus for the first time, and Rachel had simply never noticed the way things had been blurred. She can feel the ice she's always been told runs in her veins and she _knows_ what it is they've been keeping from her.

She moves to follow Leekie after a moment when he heads for the door.

“Aldous,” there's no emotion in her voice when she calls out to stop him.

He pauses, waits to hear what she has to say, and Rachel's heels click like gunshots as she stalks forward to stand just behind him. Her voice is quiet, cold and dangerous when she breaks the silence, “I'm not the only one, am I?”

There's an answer in his silence before he can even put together the words to deny it, and something within Rachel cracks. The empty cold down deep at the core of her howls, and it's only now that she can finally hear it, drowning out the first syllables of his denial.

Her pen is in his neck before he can finish the sentence. His startled gasp choking off into a wet gurgle. Rachel wraps her other arm around him for leverage and yanks the pen free before stabbing it back into his throat one more time and then letting weight of him topple forward onto the floor.

\---

Rachel doesn't remember much of next several hours. She operates on autopilot, taking a company car to her own private garage where she exchanges it for a car the board won't be able to track – doesn't spare a second thought for the corpse that had been Aldous Leekie lying in a pool of blood in her office. She has no exit strategy. There'd been no way to plan for this eventuality, when the fact that it's happened at all hinges on how she'd never seen it coming in the first place.

The experiment extends further than they'd told her. She can see it all so clearly now, years of subtle clues strung together all at once in the words 'other options'. Rachel's end of the project is a cell, a piece of a greater puzzle, and not only is Rachel one clone of many, she's not even the only cog labeled  _Rachel_ in DYAD's great machine.

Her entire life breaking down behind her, Rachel seeks out the one person she can think of that won't be swayed by the tempest as Rachel falls apart at the seams.

The loft is in a dirty neighborhood. Rachel normally wouldn't have been caught dead here, but she'd tailed Cosima back here once on her own and, while she hadn't quite known why at the time, had kept the information to herself. They hadn't needed to know how to find Sarah's safe house when they'd had her daughter in custody anyway.

It's only when she reaches the stairs that she realizes she isn't sure which floor Sarah's foster brother lives on. There are only three, and when there seems to be a stair or two missing on the way up to the third she settles on two – if she's wrong she's not sure it matters at this point.

Rachel pauses to collect herself in front of the sliding metal hulk of door and realizes, with a detached sense of what almost feels like amusement, that she still has quite a lot of Aldous's blood drying on her hands and clothes. All she can think is that, perhaps what's left of the spray she felt hit her face hours earlier, as she'd stabbed Leekie the second time, will prove distracting enough that Sarah won't shoot her on sight.

The sound of a fist against the metal rings out into the quiet of Felix's loft, and Sarah stirs awake from where she'd been sleeping on the couch.

“Fee? Is that you?” she calls out after a pause in the knocking. When there's no reply Sarah grabs Beth's gun off the coffee table and moves to stand in front of what passes for the door.

“Felix? This had better be good,” she asks once more with a sigh, but clicks the safety off on the gun and carefully removes the screwdriver from it's place locking the door. When there's still no answer, Sarah reaches forward and then quickly slides open the door while raising her gun.

The sight of Rachel Duncan, impeccably dressed as always but clothes thoroughly ruined by what looks like blood, is the last thing Sarah expects to find on the other side.

“Hello, Sarah. Do you mind if I come in for a moment?”

At Rachel's incongruously polite request, Sarah's brain skips like a bad CD player. It takes a few seconds to start running smoothly again and then all she can get out is an inarticulate, “What?”

“As well as this may not be my own blood I'm covered in, it has been a somewhat life-changing evening and I'd at least like to wash it off my hands before I lose it completely.”

There's something manic hiding behind Rachel's voice, and as confused as Sarah is at the moment she can tell this isn't quite the same Rachel as the one she'd held a gun to the previous evening.

“What makes you think I want you anywhere near my sink?” Sarah asks after another long moment.

Rachel smirks but there's not much behind it, “Well as I understand it, it's not  _your_ sink, so much as Felix's.”

Sarah cuts her off, “I know you like to play games, but you've just shown up at my brother's loft at 3 in the morning covered in blood. Barely 24 hours ago I had a gun to your head. Was about to shoot you for keeping my daughter from me before your security goons showed up. Do you think you can actually give me a good enough reason not to go through with it now?”

Rachel's smirk disappears, “Honestly? I doubt it, but if you're going to kill me, I'd like to die without Aldous Leekie's blood on my face. Point me to a sink, then we can discuss what you are or aren't going to do with that gun.”

Sarah isn't sure how to respond to that, blinks for a moment and then steps back and points Rachel toward Felix's kitchen.

Once Rachel has most of the blood off of her hands and face, Sarah breaks the silence, “So you killed Leekie? What the hell made you think coming here was a good idea?”

Rachel sighs, “I'm not who I thought I was. The game is much bigger than I believed it to be, and I'm tired of being a pawn that thinks it's a queen.”

Sarah's smirk is mildly amused, but there's still distrust and hatred in her eyes, “Figured that out, have you? I'm glad you've seen the light or whatever, and I can't say I'm sorry your epiphany took out Leekie as collateral, but I'm still not hearing what you want with me. Or why I should give it to you.”

Rachel turns off the sink and towels off her hands before moving to stand a bit closer to Sarah, “My plan didn't go much further than knocking on the door, really. I'd given it about even odds that you'd shoot me soon after opening the door. What happened at this point I hadn't quite worked up to yet.”

Rachel searches Sarah's eyes quietly for a moment, “I know why I came to you though.”

Whatever Rachel had been searching for she seems to have found, as she steps away and turns to walk toward the nearby couch. Sarah catches her by the arm before she can get far, “Mind sharing with the class?”

Rachel turns back and seems to find something about the situation amusing when she finally admits, “They don't own you.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a loosely related prequel to my fic The Rules of Chess


End file.
